I'm leaving this place but there is nothing I'm planning to take
by thecrackshiplollipop
Summary: (just you) Zombies? They only exist in fiction, right? Except what if they didn't? And what if Rachel finds herself stuck in Cassandra July's condo when the world ends? Can two such unlikely allies rely on one another for survival when they don't trust enough to share dinner plans?


The TV is on when Rachel wakes up, but the volume is low, so she can't make out what's on. The light is bright and shifting, distracting enough to keep Rachel from sinking back to sleep. Cassie's back is silhouetted against the light, her posture uncharacteristically slouched. The only indication she hasn't turned to stone is the gentle rise and fall of her shoulders as she breathes.

Rachel sits up, the satin fabric of Cassie's sheet slips off of her naked torso and exposes her skin to the warmth of the bedroom. The material is soft and Rachel vaguely remembers Cassie threatening her about messing them up. She feels weird about being naked in them now, but Cassie hasn't bothered to get dressed, either.

"What time is it?" Rachel slides down the bed, knees barely whispering over the material.

"Does it really matter?" Her voice is thick and for a minute Rachel wonders if Cassie even slept, but then it's clear she's been crying and Rachel is so shocked she doesn't even know what to say. Instead she looks from Cassie's face to the TV and suddenly she understands.

"Wh-"

"Sometime around midnight."

"Oh _god_."

* * *

News of the infection came out of the Everglades, a virus that attacked the central nervous system and methodically shut down the victim's body over a five day period.

The first two victims show up in a vet hospital north-west of Collier-Seminole State Park. Reports indicate they'd been in a swamp boat accident, one suffers an alligator bite to the leg while the other has deep scratches all down his back from an unknown animal. Their injuries are minimal and they're kept overnight to watch for infection.

By morning rounds both men present with headaches and light sensitivity, they spike low-grade fevers within moments of the headache's onset. The doctors try in vain to medicate the men, but by the afternoon it's clear they are too sick to be sent home.

The doctors order a battery of tests, standard ones first and then weirder and more obscure as the days stretch on. One doctor is positive it's bacterial, so they're put on heavy duty antibiotics and kept in clean rooms. Another doctor thinks they've contracted a parasite, but when all parasitic panels come back negative, the doctor is stumped and orders a colonoscopy. But by then - day three - the men are considered too weak. When they begin coughing up lung tissue, the doctors are all convinced it's a mutated bubonic plague and put them on a beefed up dosage of doxycycline and alert the CDC.

On day three the doctors notice the symptoms spreading through the hospital - a woman in the geriatric unit develops a fever and a headache, a teenager in post-op suddenly spikes a low grade fever when she should be getting prepped for discharge.

Agents from the CDC fly in on the fifth day, arriving at the hospital just in time to witness the man bitten by the alligator seizing and going into cardiac arrest.

Ten days later, the virus has popped up in ten other hospitals across Florida, as well as at a hospital in Mississippi and at a clinic on the Texas Gulf Coast.

Panic on the North American continent goes as viral as the disease. The United States Federal government loses control of the loose cannon states and portions of the south break away to create militarized zones. In one crazed frenzy, Mexican citizens pour over the border, overwhelming the minutemen guards stretched along the chain link fence from California to Texas. Canada closes its borders for the first time, turning away panicked Americans seeking the perceived safety of the far north. But Canada isn't safe, nowhere is. Terrifying news of the exact same disease comes out of the jungle of South America and Nicaragua, from the Nile Valley in Egypt, from a monastery in Tibet. It's reported that the entire island of Java has fallen victim and contact with Australia and New Zealand is lost.

But it's in Georgia where the true horror is realised:

The agents in Florida were ordered to bring the bodies to CDC headquarters for autopsy and further testing. It took days to arrange with the government for flight clearance, but the disease raged around them and the facilities in Floriad were insufficient to properly diagnose the illness. The body count was rising and by the time CDC agents managed to get helicopter clearance out of Florida, almost the entire hospital's population was dead.

In Atlanta, the disease had barely taken hold. The city government had acted fast and clamped down tight on the first hospital it showed up in. By the time agents returned, the virus was contained to one small hospital on the outskirts of town. At the same time of their arrival, the President was flying in for an emergency meeting.

Inside the CDC, agents were preparing the bodies for autopsy when _something _happened.

The details have never been clear, but what is known is that the deceased came back to life and started eating the unprepared and unarmed lab technicians at the CDC's headquarters. Though they were eventually put down, their victims regenerated too quickly for the untrained, unprepared CDC staff and overwhelmed the building, spilling out into a city unprepared for something so powerful and mindless.

The government calls them reanimated corpses, RACs for short. "The Walking Dead" fans call them walkers. Everyone else calls them zombies.

* * *

Day One:

"I need to go home," Rachel is off the bed in a flash, stumbling through the unfamiliar darkness of Cassie's bedroom. "Where are my clothes?"

"Home?" Cassie is slow to react, her eyes still focused on the TV when she speaks.

"Yeah. Clothes?"

Cassie's attention finally shifts to Rachel - naked, wide-eyed, and groping around the floor for her clothes. "What like, to Ohio?" Rachel freezes and stands up slowly from where she was looking under Cassie's dresser.

"No... to Brooklyn. I need to get to my roommates."

"Your clothes are in the washer. And it's past two in the morning. You're not going anywhere."

"But I-"

"Do you really want to go home naked?"

Rachel really can't argue with that.

* * *

"They won't let me leave." Rachel drops her purse on Cassie's couch, ignoring the way she grimaces, and sits down in one of her uncomfortable-looking armchairs.

"Who? The police officer who _escorted _you up here?"

"No, the soldiers down there on the street."

Cassie stalks across the living room to the full length windows that overlook the street below. The street is crawling with every official-looking person Manhattan has to offer. People are being directed back into their buildings, some at gunpoint, and Cassie can tell from their faces that whatever it is, it's something serious. She grits her teeth against unnecessarily worrying and turns back to Rachel who looks _really _awkward in her club clothes.

"Do you need something to change into?"

Rachel just nods gratefully and slips her feet out of a pair of great Jimmy Choo knockoffs.

* * *

Day Three:

"We've worked our way through most of your edible food, and it doesn't look like you have anything else for us to eat."

"I have protein bars." Cassie ruffles her hair so her curls loosen and tousle perfectly. Rachel frowns at Cassie over her shoulder and turns back to the empty pantry.

"You have a box of protein bars and we've eaten four of them." Rachel lets the pantry door slam closed and turns around quickly to look at Cassie, who is standing in front of her windows, the same place she's been since they woke up to the sound of yelling on the streets. She looks relaxed and at home in a pair of plain black yoga pants and a sports bra, not like the world is going to shit outside and their food supply is dangerously low.

"So?"

"They come in packages of six." Rachel huffs.

"Oh." Cassie finally turns away from the window and looks unfazed.

"Why don't we ask your neighbours?" Cassie glares at Rachel then and Rachel can't help grinning, just a little. It's been this constant fight between them, the fact that Cassie trips over herself to keep her neighbours from ever seeing Rachel enter or leave her flat.

"Like they're any better off than we are, no one has children in this building. Let me go talk to that ugly little soldier standing guard on my stoop."

Rachel frowns. "It's not a stoop if you pay upwards of three-thousand a month for the place." She starts trying to work up an argument for why they need to start polling the neighbours' food pantries. Cassie just rolls her eyes and walks out of the apartment before Rachel can even think of anything proper.

* * *

"I was yelled at and then escorted back inside." The door slams behind her and they hear two sets of feet marching down the hallway.

Cassie looks unhappy but accepts the protein bar that Rachel shoves in her face. "I found a can of chili in the bottom of your pantry, and you had some cheese that looks edible in your fridge."

"Anything else?"

"Do cocktail olives and several bottles of vodka count?"

"Always," Cassie rips open the wrapper to her protein bar and takes a bite. "Do you know how to make an extra dry martini?"

* * *

Day Five:

"We can't just keep getting drunk and having sex on your couch, Cassie." Rachel yanks the blanket from the back of Cassie's sofa and spreads it across her naked thighs. Cassie is stretching, naked and shameless, in front of the long windows of her loft. All of SoHo is getting a treat, if they're paying attention.

Which, they're probably not because of that whole quarantine thing.

"No, but it's been fun while the vodka lasted." Cassie bends over and retrieves her top - a loose, flimsy black stretch of fabric that barely brushes her abs. It's one of Cassie's weapons against Rachel, only Rachel's pretty sure she wasn't intending to employ the tactic when she put it on that morning. They're just running low on clean comfortable clothes.

"I'm going out for food tonight."

"You can't do that," Rachel reaches for the Kate Spade coffee-table book she's been leafing through for the past two days. She's halfway through and still knows nothing about Kate Spade other than_ pretty pictures of pretty things_ and that she's sure she's seen some of the stuff on the pages in Cassie's closet.

"I can try. And since we've already agreed we won't be bartering with my neighbours again, we're going to have to improvise. The corner store is probably _full _of untouched food. I would really like to eat some of that food."

Rachel believes her - Cassie woke up looking hungry. It's a look that either means Rachel's going to have bite marks on her shoulders or they're going to go to a fancy restaurant. And since Rachel's already sporting marks all over her shoulders and back, she gathered something else was on the menu.

"Why don't I just try the soldiers again? They've been down there for five days, they have to have their own food, right?"

"Good point." Cassie licks her lips and steps into a pair of boyshorts. "Hurry, before I do something drastic."

Rachel doesn't believe her - what could Cassie possibly do when they get guns waved at them every time they try to go outside? - but she still hurries into borrowed yoga pants and a tank top while Cassie pretends to focus on pulling her hair into a loose ponytail. Rachel's not dumb, she feels Cassie's eyes on her even as she hurries out of the front door.

* * *

"They had rations baskets all along." Rachel pushes through the door with a large box in her arms. It's big and plastic, coloured dark army green. She drops it onto the kitchen island with a grunt and a grimace before immediately heading to the kitchen sink, switching on the tap before she remembers they cut the water that morning. "Crap."

"Rations?" Cassie comes out of her bedroom and flips open the container to peek inside. It's not really standard rations: two litre bottles of water, a collection of MREs, a package of spearmint chewing gum, two chocolate bars, and a few miscellaneous canned goods. "They had these all along?"

"Mm," Rachel reaches in and produces one of the cans, furrowing her brows at the plain label. Cassie just ah's softly and holds one of the chocolate bars delicately.

"What's succotash?" Rachel purses her lips and turns the can around for Cassie to look at.

"Mixed vegetables," Cassie looks into the box and snatches a MRE from Rachel's hands. "Oh look, they included vegetarian ones."

"Why would they give us _canned _vegetables?"

"Probably because they were taking whatever they could from a food bank." Cassie shrugs and drops the vegetable lasagne MRE back into the box. "It's food, at least. And they'll bring us more, if this goes on for much longer."

* * *

Day Eight:

The news stops broadcasting in the morning, shortly after that the power cuts out and the building's auxiliary generator kicks on, giving enough power to the lights in the stairwell and the elevator. Without electricity, the street below goes dead silent except for occasional shouting followed quickly by bursts of gunfire. When Rachel ventures down to see what's going on at the street level, she gets yelled at by a heavily muscled man in fatigues. His gun and the giant knife at his hip terrify Rachel more than his yelling, so she hurries back upstairs before he has a chance to step away from his post.

* * *

Day 10:

Rachel wakes up with dry mouth and has to fumble through the pre-dawn darkness of Cassie's bedroom, groping for the doorway into the bathroom. The faucet is cool against her palms, but when she twists the tap nothing happens. The pipes groan and chug, but nothing comes out.

She forgot, of course, the water's been out since last afternoon and they're trying to conserve the four litres of water they got from some of the unclaimed rations baskets sitting in the lobby. But she's thirsty, and licking her lips is only making it worse.

So she feels her way out of the bathroom and then out of the bedroom into Cassie's sparsely furnished living room. The large windows that Cassie loves so much let in a ton of light, flooding the space with the orange glow that still hangs over the city, despite the power having gone out days ago. She wonders if the power is out in Brooklyn and if the sky over her apartment in Bushwick is still hazy and orange.

She cracks the fridge - which now serves as extra pantry space - and is reaching for one of the plastic bottles when she hears it, this dull hum cutting through the silence that's fallen over SoHo since the power went out.

Rachel closes the fridge, forgetting her thirst, and practically skips across the living room. All she can think is that there are helicopters or tanks or _something _coming to rescue them from Manhattan. She's halfway to the windows when she hears a thud that makes the entire flat shake. The decorative plates over Cassie's fireplace roll out of their stands and crash to the floor, one by one, drawing Rachel's attention from the sunrise outside.

She looks back in time to see a ball of fire drop down from the sky and crash into the building opposite Cassie's.

* * *

Everything is quiet except for the ringing sound that's making it hard for Rachel to think. She can hardly breathe thanks to the pounds of rubble piled on top of her, but every gasp is accompanied by the searing pain of acrid smoke and the taste of sulphur.

She feels the rubble shifting off of her, slowly but enough so she can breathe a little more freely with each passing second. She's screaming, she thinks, or crying. Her cheeks feel wet.

"Are you okay?" She can make out Cassie's voice, distant and muffled through the tinny ringing in her head. Cassie's face blurs into view and her hands, gritty with dirt, are brushing more debris away from Rachel's face.

"Rachel!" Sound rushes in behind Cassie's voice and it's so disorienting Rachel has to squeeze her eyes closed to regain equilibrium.

"Don't shout," Rachel sounds more cross than she intended, but her throat is raw and her head is throbbing and she can't tell if every bone in her body is broken or if that's just how you feel when a wall collapses on you.

"Are you okay?" Cassie looks relieved when she sits back onto the balls of her feet, working the bricks off of Rachel's hips and legs. Rachel sits up slowly, the world spinning for a second before it rights itself. Cassie's face is smeared with soot, her clothes a mess. Her favourite yoga pants are ripped up on the knees and that's when Rachel notices how scratched and bloody they are.

"I think so," Rachel manages after a moment, coughing to relieve some tension in her chest and wiping at the tears trailing down her cheeks. Her palms come back smeared with red and for a moment the panic that surges through her body makes her vision swim black and she swoons.

"Hey! Hey! It's okay. It's just a little cut on your forehead." Cassie's hands are back on Rachel's face, thumbs brushing over an abrasion above her left eyebrow. Rachel winces, but relaxes when it's the only immediate pain she feels. "We need to get out of here."

"Brooklyn?"

"No. Away from New York."

"But Santana and-"

"They're probably dead, Rachel." Cassie stands up, brushing aside rubble before bending over to help Rachel up. "We need to get out." Rachel's mind races. She wants to call Santana, she'd know what to do, but she can't. Cell service has been down since their second day on lockdown and she's suddenly aware of the fact that she may not speak to Santana again. Santana, or Kurt, or Finn. Shelby. Her dads.

Cassie is still there, standing in her half-blown out living room wreathed in smoke and covered in cuts. Rachel knows that to survive, she can't cling to what-ifs and maybes. She needs facts.

"No," Rachel coughs, wincing at the pain. "I'm going to Brooklyn. And you're coming with me."

She needs facts. _And _she needs clothes.

* * *

Manhattan looks like something out of _Reign of Fire_, which Rachel will never forgive Santana for forcing her to watch because now she can't stop imagining if dragons are around the corner. They keep to the wider streets, where the destruction is easy to get around and the fire has already mostly burned down.

Rachel and Cassie cling to each other as they shuffle through the broken city, down Broadway where the theatres have been turned to boulders, around City Hall Park which is a blazing inferno, and to the Brooklyn Bridge which is, thankfully, still standing. It's covered in cars parked at odd angles and jammed tight bumper to bumper.

It's a long walk across the bridge, Rachel's hips and legs are sore from the bricks, her eyes sting from the black smoke hovering in the air. Cassie is favouring a foot, but seems to shake the pain loose when they maneuver around a car that stinks of death.

Rachel half-expected the surface of the East River to be burning. Sometimes it looks greasy and slick like an oil spill, but in the light of Manhattan burning, it is still and reflects the inferno like a piece pf glass.

* * *

The world is caving in around them and all Rachel can think about is the fact that her apartment is empty. As in, planned evacuation empty. Most of the furniture is still there, like Santana's funky old arm chair and Kurt's beloved decorative knick knack collection, but there isn't a sign of anything important sitting out. The sheets that separate their rooms are all piled up on the floor and Rachel can see straight into Santana's 'room' where she'd been in the process of hanging posters before the world ended.

It also stinks to high heaven, but Rachel dismisses it because the whole building, the whole _street_, stinks of death. It's not an easy thing to dismiss, but it reminds Rachel of the time a racoon got caught in the fireplace one summer and the smell was so bad they had to go on vacation for a week to fumigate the house.

The electricity's out, which they discover when Rachel cracks open the fridge and gets hit with another sickening wave of rot. She gags violently and has to stand in a corner while Cassie plucks a half-empty egg carton a few mummified apples from the crisper drawer. Rachel dry heaves and Cassie tosses the food back into the fridge before closing the door firmly.

Cassie just makes a face and looks down at her hands. "Do you think the water's running?" She nods back towards the bathroom, a hopeful note to her voice.

"Not if the power's off," Rachel says distractedly, moving around the apartment to her bedroom. She hears Cassie try the tap in the kitchen - nothing, of course - and then open the bathroom door. Rachel is too busy rifling through her drawers to hear the noise Cassie makes right before slamming the bathroom door. "What was that?" Rachel looks up from her underwear drawer, in between the serious decision of whether or not thongs are a necessary thing at the end of days.

"Nothing. Just. Frustrated that there's not a drop of fresh running water in the five boroughs." She starts throwing open the cabinets, hoping that there's some illegally purchased booze _somewhere_.

"We've only gone through two," Rachel rolls her eyes and decides, no, thongs have always been impractical and are now more useful as dish rags. "Plus, we're about to leave New York forever, I'm sure along the way we'll find a river for you to bathe in."

"I'm not bathing in the river like some bad version of The Walking Dead."

"I don't think they bathed in the river on that show. And it's not like it'd be the Hudson. Just think of it as camping, only until civilisation is restored." Rachel abandons searching her drawers in favour of looking for a bag under her bed. Her suitcases are gone - probably thanks to Kurt and Santana - but her gym bag is buried under a pair of ugly-yet-sensible penny loafers. She can hear Cassie going through more cabinets and drawers, the hollow thud of fake wood on fake wood echoing around the mostly empty apartment.

"Ah ha! Wine! And, it's nothing like camping. It's like living in the sticks and the well pump is out so your grandfather takes you and your brothers to the watering hole and makes you take a bath in your bathing suit. Been there, done that. I'm not bathing in the river." Cassie's voice is travelling around the apartment now, the old floorboards creaking as she walks. Rachel shimmies back out from under the bed in time to see Cassie wander over into Santana's area.

"Whatever you say. I hope you like being dirty."

"I'm pretty sure you know the answer to that." There's a playful lilt to Cassie's tone, something that's been missing since the quarantine, and her lips twitch into a small smirk. It's enough to make Rachel blush from the tips of her ears to her chin and she looks away before Cassie can catch it. Instead, she focuses on stuffing as much of her clothing into the bag as it will hold.

Cassie doesn't have to say anything else, the heat pours through Rachel's veins and it's been so long since she's felt like doing something other than just survive. If only they weren't still in so much danger.

Silence stretches between them and the apartment falls still except for the ruffling of fabric as Rachel keeps pushing clothes into the bag. The street is so quiet it's almost unsettling, no one is yelling at the corner, the sound of traffic isn't there to make them feel less alone, even the pigeons seem to have abandoned the infected city.

"We should go," Rachel speaks so suddenly that Cassie actually flinches. She shifts the duffel's strap onto her shoulder and tests the weight against her hip. She still feels flush in her cheeks but does her best to look just at Cassie, instead of Santana's posters or Kurt's sad attempts at DIY art that hang on his wall. It's all a little too real.

"Aren't you wondering where they are?"

"The news said Brooklyn was under an evacuation order. They probably just went home. It's not like I can call, anyway."

"Then why did we walk all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to Bushwick when you knew they wouldn't be here?"

"I didn't know for sure. And plus, I needed… I needed to say goodbye, okay?" Rachel sighs, looking sad for just a moment. It's one of the few times Cassie's seen Rachel let herself look upset about the situation and it crumbles her resolve just enough.

"Okay. But, I'm not going with you to Iowa."

"Ohio. And yes, you are." Rachel practically sashays out of the apartment because she's pretty sure Cassie is all bark and no bite.

She's right, of course. Cassie waits a few beats before following Rachel out of the apartment, remembering to snatch the bottle of cheap merlot from the kitchen counter as she leaves.

She catches up with Rachel on the stairs, wedging next to her so she can loop her free arm through Rachel's. "I'm thinking we should go through Staten Island."

"Isn't that the only way out of Brooklyn now?"

"Not unless you want to brave Queens."

Rachel makes a face and tucks herself close to Cassie as they get to the lobby. She tries to ignore the bodies in the corner, and swallows back tears when she recognises one of them as the homeless guy she always gives her extra change to.

"But even then we'd have to go across the bridge to the Bronx and then... it's a mess."

"So. Staten Island. I've never been there."

"You're not missing much," Cassie forces a smile and heads across the crumbled, burned street, in the general direction of the Staten Island turnpike.


End file.
